[SPN Fic]: What There Thou Seest, Fair Creature, is Thyself - T - 1/1
A/N: Written for the prompt longing on the wonderful _bluebells's Five Acts Meme. I threw in some femme!Raphael, just cause I know _bluebells loves her.
Title: What There Thou Seest, Fair Creature, is Thyself
Disclaimer: I, ladyknightanka, do not own Supernatural. The title comes from Milton's Paradise Lost and is inspired by the Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus, which is referenced in this fic. Please don't replicate my silly work without permission.
Warnings: T for coarse language and some spoilers for season 6.
Other Notes: ~1800. Implied or pre-slash, depending on how you view it, Dean/Cas and Michael/Adam.
Summary: Michael misses his former vessel. Flangst ensues.
-
What There Thou Seest, Fair Creature, is Thyself
-
Castiel does not want to be Heaven’s sheriff. He misses the smell of petrol, of old leather, and the feel of the wind on his face, more gentle than the gales induced by holy flight. He misses Dean Winchester. Thus, when he finally realizes that Michael has truly given up - has deferred that Castiel’s way is, indeed, better, and has convinced Raphael of that - Castiel relinquishes his place without pause.
That is understandable. There is something, without a doubt, very appealing about no longer having to plan guerrilla tactics to wage a civil war against your own family, about no longer having to go behind Dean’s back with Crowley or, what’s worse, to lie to the hunter about it. Michael can see that, and if it makes his younger brother, now the youngest of archangels, happy, then he is willing to do his part.
The problem, however, is that Michael never expected to relate. To sympathize, perhaps, but never empathize. He has always been Heaven’s Sword and has known nothing but that, save for the short period of time he was in Hell - a mere blink of an eye in the life of an angel. So why is it that he spends more and more time away from God’s throne, away from his brethren angels? Why is it that his handing the reins to Raphael has become a more common occurrence? He promised Castiel he wouldn’t, after all.
“There are an influx of deals being made in the eastern hemisphere. Good souls are being traded - souls that rightfully belong to us are now the property of that infuriating demon!” Raphael’s voice has taken on a higher pitch, thanks to this new vessel, but the barely constrained rage that the archangel forever feels is no less inhibited. Raphael is always ready to destroy something.
Michael is unperturbed, as he leans back against the throne, the archangelic healer bowed before him. He is slouching, actually, and it’s comfortable, allowing his wings to stretch and his feathers to hang free, rather than straining so tightly against his back that they look more like a regal cape, but he can see from the way Raphael’s nose wrinkles in disgust that it is unlike him, perhaps even bothersome.
The sky above, blocked by a thin, ethereal film of gossamer - spider-silk that was formed millenniums ago to protect the true visage of the throne room, its delicate beauty belying its near limitless strength - is a swirling mix of very pale blue, the barest of spring greens, and a cooler gray, dappled almost lavender. It holds Michael’s attention, reminiscent of eyes he used to have, yet it feels so wrong now.
“Michael!” Raphael barks, sharp in the room’s hush, her chin tilting defiantly. “I can’t believe you’re ignoring me!” If she wasn’t kneeling, she might have stamped her foot.
Michael sits up a bit, eying her critically, and the words rush out almost without his permission. “You are acting rather like a bitch.”
Raphael’s jaw, a line that sloped more gently of late, despite her habit of keeping it relentlessly firm, drops open. For the first time since the beginning of time, she begins to sputter, not nearly so dignified as she usually is.
Two feelings surge within Michael’s grace: first, amusement, because it is quite pleasurable to lash out at one of the many voices that are always assaulting him, always demanding his attention - and Raphael is the leader of this endless cacophony.
Presiding over that, however, is remorse. It is most unlike Michael to raise his voice. Despite being Heaven’s most formidable warrior, he has generally chosen passivity over aggression, when possible.
‘Chosen to be a pansy,’ the voice in his head would have interjected, had it still been there. Instead, it is merely a black hole within Michael, which should have been too small to affect him, and he immediately tells himself that holes, gaping or otherwise, do not speak.
When he stands, Raphael falls silent, the words she’s thus strung together, no doubt employing much effort so as not to curse, no longer worth much.
“I’m sorry,” Michael tells her, proffering his hand as a truce. She eyes it for a moment, with all the suspicion generally reserved for an enemy, then accepts, rising gracefully. He offers her a wan, tired smile and says, “I trust you to handle Crowley. He is no obstacle to us, but Raphael, think for a moment - would it be so wrong to slacken the rope you extend to hang him? Remember, he has cleansed Hell for us.”
Raphael frowns, softer now, before inclining her head. She likes leadership, it is true, but her respect for Michael yet overrides that. “I will consider it.”
“Thank you,” Michael says, eyes tracing over her to the sky again. He turns, then pauses mid-step when she touches his arm lightly. “Yes, Raphael?”
“Where are you…?” She trails off, frustration warring with the trust she sorely wants to feel for him, but he knows what she needs to ask.
“I simply wish to fly, to clear my head,” he murmurs, standing, for a moment, utterly still. He’s waiting for her to tell him that angels require no such thing - that only humans have bickering souls to soothe.
She only nods, albeit curtly. “Have a nice flight, brother.”
Michael does not look at her as his wings shoot out, spanning wide enough to encompass the room in tawny feathers. It will not nice, he thinks, but a paradox of too soon and ever far.
-
Kate Milligan’s Heaven is a small, cozy house - a home - that Michael knows to be depressingly empty, on earth. She is in the kitchen when he arrives, humming a lullaby-song that is familiar to him, though he was never whom she intended it for, but it falters when she catches sight of his likeness in a window.
“No,” she says, facing him, her brown eyes growing round. Her fall of blond hair, lighter than he likes, billows around her face as she punctuates the word with a harsh shake of her head. “No, no, no! You can’t be here! Not again!”
She is right to be angry. The last time he came, he brought her son to her, broken, shattered, a wreck of the cheerful child she will never stop loving or mourning. He’d tried to apologize, then, to tell her that he’d done his very best to shield the boy from Hellfire, from Lucifer’s wrath, from the pain of being repeatedly left behind, but it wasn’t enough. Not then and not now. It never would be.
“Kate,” he begins, taking on a plaintive edge. He will not drive through her, but he craves this so much that he is at a loss for what else to do.
She shakes her head harder, eyes screwed shut, but it doesn’t matter. He hears the footsteps, anyway, more spirited than his own, his light-footed cat steps, had been, in the same vessel.
Adam looks no different than he did in the Green Room, save for how he’s discarded Dean’s clothes for a light blue shirt that reads I’m a baby eagle. It is a small reminder of where he is, his mother’s Heaven, and there’s a memory, too deep in Adam’s subconsciousness for him to ever recall, of a newborn wearing that same shirt on the day he was brought home for the first time. He looks considerably better than he did the last time Michael saw him, when his soul was falling apart in the archangel's helpless grasp, seam by delicate seam.
Adam's lovely eyes flit from his mother’s pained expression to Michael’s pleading one, before he sighs. “Mom, it’s okay. Why don’t you go upstairs? I’ll be there in a bit.”
She stares at him sadly, her chin quivering, but assents. Nevertheless, Michael can feel a hard glare and an accompanying scowl boring into his back, as she scales the staircase. If she could, Kate Milligan would tear him apart, feather by feather, but she is Adam’s mother and he expects as much. His former host had to have inherited his scathing wit from someone, right?
Adam smiles at him, genuinely pleased, and Michael reaches out, content to ignore everything else, but the boy shakes his head. “C’mere,” he says instead, stepping back into the living room and dropping onto the couch. There is a pointedly empty spot beside him. When Michael approaches with undue caution, an amicable arm is slung over his shoulders and Adam quirks a fair brow at him. “My dad’s meatsuit… Really?”
Michael shrugs. “It isn’t truly him, but an illusion, and I thought you’d be more comfortable with his younger incarnation, which you’ve never seen. Would you rather I used yours?”
“Fuck no,” Adam rebuts, pursing his lips in distaste. “I’ve already been eaten and gone to Hell. The last thing I want is to wither away in the afterlife, staring at my own reflection. Gross.”
“It’s a rather nice reflection,” Michael replies, both wistful and teasing, and he’s delighted by the pink flush that immediately paints over Adam’s too pale cheeks.
“Shut up,” the boy mutters gruffly, crossing his arms. “I’m already mad you took this long to drop by - don’t add to the fire, fly-boy.”
“I’m sorry,” Michael answers, ducking his head with authentic regret. He analyzes Adam through the sheer veil of John Winchester’s lashes, watching him bite his lower lip in an effort to stay mad, but ultimately failing in the endeavor. It is...distractingly adorable.
“Whatever,” Adam finally says, angry mostly with himself. “What are you here for, anyway? You need something?”
“Oh yes,” Michael replies, exaggeratedly serious. When, despite himself, curiosity lights up on Adam’s face, the angel permits himself a tiny smirk. “I require advice. I called Raphael a ‘bitch’, you see, and I'm now unsure as to my next course of action.”
Adam’s eyes widen, mirthful tears beginning to leak from them, and his laughter permeates clearly throughout the room, deep and warm, the toll of church bells. “Oh, that is epic, man.” Michael doesn’t answer, choosing instead to reach out and capture his face, watching him still completely, then wiping away residual teardrops with the pads of his thumbs, roughened by the mechanical work John used to do. Adam allows him this, huffing halfheartedly, before declaring, “You know what you should do next? Get rid of Kathy Griffin. I swear, she is the most obnoxious human being alive.”
“Of course,” Michael relents, curling one wing over the back of the couch, till it circles to drape across Adam’s side. He smiles when the boy goes starry-eyed and doesn’t pull away, instead burrowing closer into Michael's furnace-like warmth, his cold, human hands carding through the smallest of downy plumes. Against the most perfect shade of wheat-colored hair, Michael whispers, “This is what I missed the most.”
-
And then there was wall-sex, the end...
-
A/N: The fact that I wrote this in class, when I was supposed to be studious (ahaha, I'm such a bad girl), accounts for any awkwardness. Also, I've never written Michael's POV before and I don't generally write in the present tense. Plus...they didn't get any farther than cuddling... I suck at kink meme fills... I hope my lovely friend will forgive me for any inconsistencies.
Title: What There Thou Seest, Fair Creature, is Thyself
Disclaimer: I, ladyknightanka, do not own Supernatural. The title comes from Milton's Paradise Lost and is inspired by the Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus, which is referenced in this fic. Please don't replicate my silly work without permission.
Warnings: T for coarse language and some spoilers for season 6.
Other Notes: ~1800. Implied or pre-slash, depending on how you view it, Dean/Cas and Michael/Adam.
Summary: Michael misses his former vessel. Flangst ensues.
-
What There Thou Seest, Fair Creature, is Thyself
-
Castiel does not want to be Heaven’s sheriff. He misses the smell of petrol, of old leather, and the feel of the wind on his face, more gentle than the gales induced by holy flight. He misses Dean Winchester. Thus, when he finally realizes that Michael has truly given up - has deferred that Castiel’s way is, indeed, better, and has convinced Raphael of that - Castiel relinquishes his place without pause.
That is understandable. There is something, without a doubt, very appealing about no longer having to plan guerrilla tactics to wage a civil war against your own family, about no longer having to go behind Dean’s back with Crowley or, what’s worse, to lie to the hunter about it. Michael can see that, and if it makes his younger brother, now the youngest of archangels, happy, then he is willing to do his part.
The problem, however, is that Michael never expected to relate. To sympathize, perhaps, but never empathize. He has always been Heaven’s Sword and has known nothing but that, save for the short period of time he was in Hell - a mere blink of an eye in the life of an angel. So why is it that he spends more and more time away from God’s throne, away from his brethren angels? Why is it that his handing the reins to Raphael has become a more common occurrence? He promised Castiel he wouldn’t, after all.
“There are an influx of deals being made in the eastern hemisphere. Good souls are being traded - souls that rightfully belong to us are now the property of that infuriating demon!” Raphael’s voice has taken on a higher pitch, thanks to this new vessel, but the barely constrained rage that the archangel forever feels is no less inhibited. Raphael is always ready to destroy something.
Michael is unperturbed, as he leans back against the throne, the archangelic healer bowed before him. He is slouching, actually, and it’s comfortable, allowing his wings to stretch and his feathers to hang free, rather than straining so tightly against his back that they look more like a regal cape, but he can see from the way Raphael’s nose wrinkles in disgust that it is unlike him, perhaps even bothersome.
The sky above, blocked by a thin, ethereal film of gossamer - spider-silk that was formed millenniums ago to protect the true visage of the throne room, its delicate beauty belying its near limitless strength - is a swirling mix of very pale blue, the barest of spring greens, and a cooler gray, dappled almost lavender. It holds Michael’s attention, reminiscent of eyes he used to have, yet it feels so wrong now.
“Michael!” Raphael barks, sharp in the room’s hush, her chin tilting defiantly. “I can’t believe you’re ignoring me!” If she wasn’t kneeling, she might have stamped her foot.
Michael sits up a bit, eying her critically, and the words rush out almost without his permission. “You are acting rather like a bitch.”
Raphael’s jaw, a line that sloped more gently of late, despite her habit of keeping it relentlessly firm, drops open. For the first time since the beginning of time, she begins to sputter, not nearly so dignified as she usually is.
Two feelings surge within Michael’s grace: first, amusement, because it is quite pleasurable to lash out at one of the many voices that are always assaulting him, always demanding his attention - and Raphael is the leader of this endless cacophony.
Presiding over that, however, is remorse. It is most unlike Michael to raise his voice. Despite being Heaven’s most formidable warrior, he has generally chosen passivity over aggression, when possible.
‘Chosen to be a pansy,’ the voice in his head would have interjected, had it still been there. Instead, it is merely a black hole within Michael, which should have been too small to affect him, and he immediately tells himself that holes, gaping or otherwise, do not speak.
When he stands, Raphael falls silent, the words she’s thus strung together, no doubt employing much effort so as not to curse, no longer worth much.
“I’m sorry,” Michael tells her, proffering his hand as a truce. She eyes it for a moment, with all the suspicion generally reserved for an enemy, then accepts, rising gracefully. He offers her a wan, tired smile and says, “I trust you to handle Crowley. He is no obstacle to us, but Raphael, think for a moment - would it be so wrong to slacken the rope you extend to hang him? Remember, he has cleansed Hell for us.”
Raphael frowns, softer now, before inclining her head. She likes leadership, it is true, but her respect for Michael yet overrides that. “I will consider it.”
“Thank you,” Michael says, eyes tracing over her to the sky again. He turns, then pauses mid-step when she touches his arm lightly. “Yes, Raphael?”
“Where are you…?” She trails off, frustration warring with the trust she sorely wants to feel for him, but he knows what she needs to ask.
“I simply wish to fly, to clear my head,” he murmurs, standing, for a moment, utterly still. He’s waiting for her to tell him that angels require no such thing - that only humans have bickering souls to soothe.
She only nods, albeit curtly. “Have a nice flight, brother.”
Michael does not look at her as his wings shoot out, spanning wide enough to encompass the room in tawny feathers. It will not nice, he thinks, but a paradox of too soon and ever far.
-
Kate Milligan’s Heaven is a small, cozy house - a home - that Michael knows to be depressingly empty, on earth. She is in the kitchen when he arrives, humming a lullaby-song that is familiar to him, though he was never whom she intended it for, but it falters when she catches sight of his likeness in a window.
“No,” she says, facing him, her brown eyes growing round. Her fall of blond hair, lighter than he likes, billows around her face as she punctuates the word with a harsh shake of her head. “No, no, no! You can’t be here! Not again!”
She is right to be angry. The last time he came, he brought her son to her, broken, shattered, a wreck of the cheerful child she will never stop loving or mourning. He’d tried to apologize, then, to tell her that he’d done his very best to shield the boy from Hellfire, from Lucifer’s wrath, from the pain of being repeatedly left behind, but it wasn’t enough. Not then and not now. It never would be.
“Kate,” he begins, taking on a plaintive edge. He will not drive through her, but he craves this so much that he is at a loss for what else to do.
She shakes her head harder, eyes screwed shut, but it doesn’t matter. He hears the footsteps, anyway, more spirited than his own, his light-footed cat steps, had been, in the same vessel.
Adam looks no different than he did in the Green Room, save for how he’s discarded Dean’s clothes for a light blue shirt that reads I’m a baby eagle. It is a small reminder of where he is, his mother’s Heaven, and there’s a memory, too deep in Adam’s subconsciousness for him to ever recall, of a newborn wearing that same shirt on the day he was brought home for the first time. He looks considerably better than he did the last time Michael saw him, when his soul was falling apart in the archangel's helpless grasp, seam by delicate seam.
Adam's lovely eyes flit from his mother’s pained expression to Michael’s pleading one, before he sighs. “Mom, it’s okay. Why don’t you go upstairs? I’ll be there in a bit.”
She stares at him sadly, her chin quivering, but assents. Nevertheless, Michael can feel a hard glare and an accompanying scowl boring into his back, as she scales the staircase. If she could, Kate Milligan would tear him apart, feather by feather, but she is Adam’s mother and he expects as much. His former host had to have inherited his scathing wit from someone, right?
Adam smiles at him, genuinely pleased, and Michael reaches out, content to ignore everything else, but the boy shakes his head. “C’mere,” he says instead, stepping back into the living room and dropping onto the couch. There is a pointedly empty spot beside him. When Michael approaches with undue caution, an amicable arm is slung over his shoulders and Adam quirks a fair brow at him. “My dad’s meatsuit… Really?”
Michael shrugs. “It isn’t truly him, but an illusion, and I thought you’d be more comfortable with his younger incarnation, which you’ve never seen. Would you rather I used yours?”
“Fuck no,” Adam rebuts, pursing his lips in distaste. “I’ve already been eaten and gone to Hell. The last thing I want is to wither away in the afterlife, staring at my own reflection. Gross.”
“It’s a rather nice reflection,” Michael replies, both wistful and teasing, and he’s delighted by the pink flush that immediately paints over Adam’s too pale cheeks.
“Shut up,” the boy mutters gruffly, crossing his arms. “I’m already mad you took this long to drop by - don’t add to the fire, fly-boy.”
“I’m sorry,” Michael answers, ducking his head with authentic regret. He analyzes Adam through the sheer veil of John Winchester’s lashes, watching him bite his lower lip in an effort to stay mad, but ultimately failing in the endeavor. It is...distractingly adorable.
“Whatever,” Adam finally says, angry mostly with himself. “What are you here for, anyway? You need something?”
“Oh yes,” Michael replies, exaggeratedly serious. When, despite himself, curiosity lights up on Adam’s face, the angel permits himself a tiny smirk. “I require advice. I called Raphael a ‘bitch’, you see, and I'm now unsure as to my next course of action.”
Adam’s eyes widen, mirthful tears beginning to leak from them, and his laughter permeates clearly throughout the room, deep and warm, the toll of church bells. “Oh, that is epic, man.” Michael doesn’t answer, choosing instead to reach out and capture his face, watching him still completely, then wiping away residual teardrops with the pads of his thumbs, roughened by the mechanical work John used to do. Adam allows him this, huffing halfheartedly, before declaring, “You know what you should do next? Get rid of Kathy Griffin. I swear, she is the most obnoxious human being alive.”
“Of course,” Michael relents, curling one wing over the back of the couch, till it circles to drape across Adam’s side. He smiles when the boy goes starry-eyed and doesn’t pull away, instead burrowing closer into Michael's furnace-like warmth, his cold, human hands carding through the smallest of downy plumes. Against the most perfect shade of wheat-colored hair, Michael whispers, “This is what I missed the most.”
-
And then there was wall-sex, the end...
-
A/N: The fact that I wrote this in class, when I was supposed to be studious (ahaha, I'm such a bad girl), accounts for any awkwardness. Also, I've never written Michael's POV before and I don't generally write in the present tense. Plus...they didn't get any farther than cuddling... I suck at kink meme fills... I hope my lovely friend will forgive me for any inconsistencies.